Through my eyes
A little jungle in the Old City
Thailand is an amazing place, full of puzzling contradictions, people from all over the world, and wonders only available in a tropical climate. When it gets down to 20° the Thais put on parkas and complain about the cold, and then turn around and complain about the heat at 34° (this one I agree with). My first week in Chiang Mai, the capital of the old northern Kingdom of Lanna, was spent wandering around the Old City, going to temples, missing home, and getting used to the heat. I was lucky enough to have a nice little reading spot in the shade at Nature's Way House to escape the worst of it during the day, but I tried hard not to retreat into the air conditioning too much as I wanted to get acclimated. Chiang Mai was the capital of the Lanna kingdom when it was established in 1296, and due to the constant threat from nearby Burma it was surrounded by a moat and a wall. The moat still exists, though it has plenty of roads which cross it, and the wall even exists in pieces, most notably at Tha Phae gate, which is still a major landmark in the city, surrounded by a market at night, and serving as a drop off point for many intercity and city bus routes. The moat also provides a means of orienting yourself, particularly useful to one who is new to the city and traveling around on a longboard. If you get lost, head toward the middle of town till you hit the moat, then walk around it until you recognize your surroundings, (saved me a couple times). Even once you know your way around it's the easiest way to give and receive directions, especially to a songthaew driver who doesn't speak English past "twenty baht". A songthaew is a pick-up truck with the back converted for passengers, and is the cheapest way to get around Chiang Mai unless you're going to use one more than 5 times in the day. If you're going to be often on the move, and you're proficient on two wheels, it's worth renting a motor scooter to get around. I didn't figure this out until week 3 but to be fair i didn't need one till then either.
Red Chiang Mai Songthaew
Thailand has a very high rate of accidents on the road, but honestly as long as you keep your wits about you and embrace driving the way the Thais drive you will be alright. It's worth noting that drivers here, scooters, bikes, motorcycles, and cars, don't see any problem with pulling into any available space, and that you will be beeped at by the scooter behind you if they think you can fit between the cars in front of you. This makes traffic far easier to navigate by scooter as you can usually find a way to fit in between the cars if you're creative and observant. On several occasions the police have waved me into the space between cars on the other side of an intersection while keeping the cars on either side of me stuck in the jam. But enough on the traffic, let's talk food. There is indeed an amazing variety of food to be found here, there are little Italian bistro's run by expats, a british pub with NFL and Rugby aired the day after the game, and all the various Asian cuisines well represented.
omg the dragon fruit...
If you're lucky enough to have a kitchen available, and you can get past the open air style, you can also visit the markets for raw meat and produce. Although the markets take a little getting used to for anyone with a western concept of food safely, the fact is that all the street food vendors get their stuff here so you can't really avoid it unless you want to skip all the best food around. In the neighborhood markets, the meat and chicken and seafood is sitting on ice, with an ingenious little device spinning above it to keep the flies away. As Anthony Bourdain said "this pretty much violates all the rules I was taught about safe food handling, but as this is Thailand, those rules don't apply." It's true that there is no running water at a street cart, and the same rag may go an hour or two without a rinse, but really if you skip it all to save yourself the chance of a little travel-gut then you're gonna miss out on all the good stuff. My absolute favourite thing thus far is the Pad Pak Boong, a dish of stir-fried Thai morning glory, often called water spinach elsewhere in the world. It is thrown in a wok with oyster sauce, garlic, Thai chili peppers, and a little water and fried up until the leaves wilt. Because the pak boong is served with much of the stalk still on it it retains a little crunch, and the chili peppers provide quite a kick, especially once you learn to say spicy in Thai "Phet MAK!" They also have a variety of bananas here of various flavours and colours, all used for different things in different recipes, and boy do I love bananas. One of the most popular is the Gluay nam wah, (banana from Nam Wah) which has a high protein content and is used as a home remedy for various stomach ailments. It is used in many traditional northern Thai dishes, and despite being less sweet than the Cavendish (which is what you get if you ask for a banana in the west) is quite tasty, particularly when boiled up with a little coconut milk to make "Gluay Buadt chee." Another delight is the ever-present fruit carts, selling sliced up pineapple, watermelon, lychee, and DRAGON-FRUIT. I probably had dragon fruit for breakfast 6 days in a row one week, substituting some gluay nam wah fried with sesame seeds on Sunday for some variety. I cannot stress enough the cheap and delicious fruit available everywhere, and they are happy to throw it in a shake for you too for a couple extra baht. A shake here is fruit, ice, and water, so don't be surprised if they don't have dairy, or want extra to throw some in. These same carts will often have a cooler of green coconuts on ice that they will cleaver a hole in and throw in a straw for a small fee, anything to beat the heat. Well now I'm hungry, luckily I know just the place for some pad pak boong after dark, talk to you soon!
J
